Spring Cleaning

Before we get started, something should be made very
clear: Jean never lets things pile up as badly as
Vapula does. Keeping one's workstation and Cathedral
clean and neat aids one's efficiency. Jean also
doesn't throw out things just because he's gotten
bored with them: for one thing, Jean doesn't get
bored. And Jean certainly doesn?t leave potentially
devastating relics around for just anyone to pick up
and misuse.

However, even an Archangel needs to go through his
stuff every decade or so and try to shift some of the
clutter. Just because a Cathedral is infinitely
extendable doesn't give one the excuse to let
reorganizations slide: besides, there's all the old
and obsolete equipment to get rid of. Jean would just
miracle it all away, but apparently the other
Archangels seem more than happy to send over Servitors
to do the heavy lifting. They have ulterior motives,
of course: 'obsolete' to a Servitor of Lightning
usually means 'bleeding edge' to everyone else, and
Lightning Tech is guaranteed to be safe, reliable and
rugged. The computer hardware alone is well worth
snagging, but that's just the tip of the iceberg: the
pickings can be insanely profitable.

So, the PCs have been 'volunteered' (although anyone
with a grain of sense would be insane not to angle for
this kind of duty): they've been given an official
shopping list, plus a few quiet verbal instructions on
especially nice pretties to keep an eye out for.
Presuming that there are moving vans in your Heaven
(and why not? Some blessed souls like driving, so
there ought to be roads and cars and stuff), they get
one of those, too (with the unstated but obvious hint
to bring it back packed). Needless to say, the PCs
are also free to bring back personal souvenirs, as
long as they don't get too greedy.

Now, neither Jean nor his Servitors are idiots, of
course: they know full well that certain Archangels
(coughcoughJanuscoughcoughMichaelcoughcoughZadkielcoughcough)
aren't about to ask too many awkward questions about
how certain relics mysteriously showed up in the
aforementioned vans. So, each party of cleaners gets
a helpful (and very vigilant) Servitor of Lightning to
direct their efforts. Also, there's a certain
tendency to make sure that all the spare papers (which
annually threaten to collapse under their own mass and
turn into neutronium) are removed first. It's only
efficient to assign this necessary task to more -
muscular - members of the Host, no?

Running this actually can be fun, if a bit combat
light: after all, the PCs get to go _everywhere_ in
the Halls of Progress, complete with tour guide. They
also get to figure out how to grab the good stuff
before the other Trash Squads do. Some Servitors of
Lightning will be more than happy to do a little
dealing on the side, trading stuff that isn't quite
ready to be thrown away in exchange for various types
of favors. Of course, some won't. It's also likely
that at least one storage room full of really neat
things will be mislabeled as needing to be disposed
off en masse: nobody's perfect.

Interaction with the other Trash Squads can be
interesting, too: if you've scored the files to a new
type of fertilizer, do you trade it to the
Flowerchildren with the computer disks containing
detailed ways to create edible explosives, or just try
to steal the latter from them? And what do you do
when the Seraph of Flowers whaps you with his Choir
Attunement and takes the files from your unresisting
hands?

Of course, some GMs may have players who do not enjoy
roleplaying going to a swap meet, incomprehensible as
that might sound to any sensible entity. If that
happens, just have some poor dupe accidentally open up
the wrong door and let out a gross or so of captured
Vapulan Flying Steam Automatons of Doom, or anything
else that is conducive to clever maneuvering around
the Pax Dei. Tracking them down (and making blessed
sure that a few end up in the van) should give those
players something to do.